Drug Use in Night Owls May Increase the Risk for Mental Health Problems.
Authors
Fernando, Jeevan
Stochl, Jan
Ersche, Karen D
Publication Date
2021Journal Title
Front Neurosci
ISSN
1662-4548
Publisher
Frontiers Media SA
Volume
15
Language
en
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Fernando, J., Stochl, J., & Ersche, K. D. (2021). Drug Use in Night Owls May Increase the Risk for Mental Health Problems.. Front Neurosci, 15 https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2021.819566
Abstract
Drugs of abuse are widely known to worsen mental health problems, but this relationship may not be a simple causational one. Whether or not a person is susceptible to the negative effects of drugs of abuse may not only be determined by their addictive properties, but also the users' chronotype, which determines their daily activity patterns. The present study investigates the relationship between chronotype, drug use and mental health problems in a cross-sectional community sample. Participants (n = 209) completed a selection of questionnaires online, including the Munich Chronotype Questionnaire, the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale, the Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test, the Cannabis Use Disorder Identification Test and the Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence. We conducted multiple regression models to determine relationships between participants' chronotype and their reported mental health symptoms and then estimated mediation models to investigate the extent to which their drug consumption accounted for the identified associations. Chronotype was significantly associated with participants' overall mental health (β = 0.16, p = 0.022) and their anxiety levels (β = 0.18, p = 0.009) but not with levels of depression or stress. However, both relationships were fully mediated by participants' overall drug consumption. Thus, late chronotypes, so-called "night owls", not only use more drugs but consequently have an increased risk for developing anxiety and deteriorating mental health status. This group may be particularly vulnerable to the negative psychological effects of drugs. Our results point toward the importance of considering chronotype in designing preventative and therapeutic innovations, specifically for anxiety, which at present has been largely neglected.
Keywords
Neuroscience, chronotype, anxiety, tobacco, alcohol, cannabis, mediation analysis, depression, online
Sponsorship
This work was financially supported by the Medical Research Council (MRC; MR/J012084/1) and the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre. The views expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors and not of the funder. KDE was supported by an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for senior researchers (Grant No. GBR 1202805 HFST-E). J.S. was partly supported by the NIHR Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC) East of England and by the Charles University Research Development Schemes Programme P38. All authors declare to have no conflict of interest.
Funder references
Medical Research Council (MR/J012084/1)
Medical Research Council (G0701497)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2021.819566
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/333333
Rights
Licence:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Statistics
Total file downloads (since January 2020). For more information on metrics see the
IRUS guide.